Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

overlapping his jaws, his narrowed eyes half lost in the

convolutions of his face. He could not walk from one room to another

without support. Realizing that he had not many years to live, he

issued (1543) a new decree fixing the succession to his throne:

first on Edward, then on Mary, then on Elizabeth; he went no

further, for next in line was Mary Stuart of Scotland. In a final

effort to beget a healthy son, and after repeated urging from his

Council, he married a sixth wife (July 12, 1543). Catherine Parr had

survived two previous husbands, but the King no longer insisted on

virgins. She was a woman of culture and tact; she nursed her royal

invalid patiently, reconciled him with his long-neglected daughter

Elizabeth, and tried to soften his theology and his persecuting zeal.

Theological bonfires continued to the end of the reign: twenty-six

persons were burned for heresy in its final eight years. In 1543 spies

reported to Bishop Gardiner that Henry Filmer had said, "If God is

really present [in the consecrated Host], then in my lifetime I have

eaten twenty gods"; that Robert Testwood, at the elevation of the

Host, had jocularly warned the priest not to let God fall; and that

Anthony Pierson had called any priest a thief who preached anything

but "the Word of God"- i.e., the Scriptures. All these men, by the

Anglican Bishop's orders, were burned in a meadow before the royal

palace at Windsor. The King was disturbed to find that the evidence

given by a witness in these cases was perjury; the culprit was sent to

the Tower. `062547 In 1546 Gardiner condemned four more to the stake

for denying the Real Presence. One was a young woman, Anne Askew,

who kept to her heresy through five hours of questioning. "That

which you call your God," she said at her trial, "is a piece of bread;

for proof thereof let it lie in a box three months, and it will be

moldy." She was tortured till nearly dead to elicit from her the names

of other heretics; she remained silent in her agony, and went to her

death, she said, "as merry as one that is bound toward

heaven." `062548 The King was not active in these persecutions, but

the victims appealed to him without result.

In 1543 he fell into war with Scotland and his "beloved brother"

Francis I, and soon found himself allied with his old enemy Charles V.

To finance his campaigns he demanded new "loans" from his subjects,

repudiated payment on the loans of 1542, and confiscated the

endowments of the universities. `062549 He was carried to the war in

person, and supervised the siege and capture of Boulogne. His armies

invaded Scotland and wrecked the abbeys of Melrose and Dryburgh, and

five other monasteries, but were routed at Ancrum Moor (1545). A

profitable accord was signed with France (1546), and the King could

die in peace.

He was now so weak that noble families openly contended as to

which should have the regency for young Edward. A poet, the Earl of

Surrey, was so confident that his father, the Duke of York, would be

regent that he adopted a coat of arms suitable only to an

heir-apparent to the throne. Henry arrested both; they confessed their

guilt; the poet was beheaded on January 9, 1547, and the Duke was

scheduled for execution soon after the twenty-seventh. But on the

twenty-eighth the King died. He was fifty-five years old, but he had

lived a dozen lives in one. He left a large sum to pay for Masses

for the repose of his soul.

-

The thirty-seven years of his reign transformed England more

deeply than perhaps he imagined or desired. He thought to replace

the pope while leaving unchanged the old faith that had habituated the

people to moral restraints and obedience to law; but his successful

defiance of the papacy, his swift dispersal of monks and relics, his

repeated humiliation of the clergy, his appropriation of Church

property, and his secularization of the government so weakened

ecclesiastical prestige and authority as to invite the theological

changes that followed in the reigns of Edward and Elizabeth. The

English Reformation was less doctrinal than the German, but one

outstanding result was the same- the victory of the state over the

Church. The people escaped from an infallible pope into the arms of an

absolute king.

In a material sense they had not benefited. They paid church

tithes as before, but the net surplus went to the government. Many

peasants now tilled their tenancies for "steplords" more ruthless than

the abbots whom Carlyle was to idealize in Past and Present. William

Cobbett thought that "viewed merely in its social aspect, the

English Reformation was in reality the rising of the rich against

the poor." `062550 Records of prices and wages indicate that the

agricultural and town workers were better off at Henry's accession

than at his death." `062551

The moral aspects of the reign were bad. The King gave the nation

a demoralizing example in his sexual indulgence, his callous passing

in a few days from the execution of one wife to the bed of the next,

his calm cruelty, fiscal dishonesty, and material greed. The upper

classes disordered the court and government with corrupt intrigues;

the gentry emulated Henry in grasping at the wealth of the Church; the

industrialists mulcted their workers and were mulcted by the King. The

decay of charity did not complete the picture, for there remained

the debasing subserviency of a terrified people to a selfish autocrat.

Only the courage of the Protestant and Catholic martyrs redeemed the

scene, and Fisher and More, the noblest of them, had persecuted in

their turn.

In a large perspective even those bitter years bore some good fruit.

The Reformation had to be; we must repeatedly remind ourselves of this

while we record the deviltry of the century that gave it birth. The

break with the past was violent and painful, but only a brutal blow

could shake its grip on the minds of men. When that incubus was

removed, the spirit of nationalism, which at first permitted

despotism, became a popular enthusiasm and a creative force. The

elimination of the papacy from English affairs left the people for a

time at the mercy of the state; but in the long run it compelled

them to rely on themselves in checking their rulers and claiming,

decade after decade, a measure of freedom commensurate with their

intelligence. The government would not always be as powerful as

under Henry the Terrible; it would be weak under a sickly son and an

embittered daughter; then, under a vacillating but triumphant queen,

the nation would rise in a burst of liberated energy, and lift

itself to the leadership of the European mind. Perhaps Elizabeth and

Shakespeare could not have been had not England been set free by her

worst and strongest king.

CHAPTER XXVI: Edward VI and Mary Tudor: 1547-58

I. THE SOMERSET PROTECTORATE: 1547-49

-

THE ten-year-old boy who succeeded to the throne of England as

Edward VI had been painted by Holbein four years before in one of

the most appealing of all portraits: feathered beret, red hair,

ermine-collared robe, and a face of such gentleness and wistful

delicacy that we should imagine him to be all Jane Seymour, nothing of

Henry VIII. Perhaps he inherited the physical frailty that had made

her life his ransom; he never gained the strength to rule. Yet he took

in noble earnest the obligations falling to him as prince or king:

zealously studied languages, geography, government, and war; kept

close watch on all affairs of state that were allowed to come under

his ken; and showed to all except nonconforming Catholics so much

kindness and good will that England thought it had buried an ogre to

crown a saint. Educated by Cranmer, he had become an ardent

Protestant. He discouraged any severe punishment for heresy, but was

unwilling to let his Catholic half-sister Mary hear Mass, for he

sincerely believed the Mass to be the most blasphemous idolatry. He

accepted gladly the decision of the Royal Council that chose as regent

for him his uncle Edward Seymour- soon made Duke of Somerset- who

favored a Protestant policy.

Somerset was a man of intelligence, courage, and integrity imperfect

but, in his time, outstanding. Handsome, courteous, generous, he

shamed by his life the cowardly and self-seeking aristocracy that

could forgive him everything but his sympathy for the poor. Though

almost absolute in power, he ended the absolutism established by Henry

VII and VIII, allowed much greater freedom of speech, reduced the

number of actions previously classed as treason or felony, required

sounder evidence for conviction, returned their dowries to the

widows of condemned men, and repealed the more oppressive laws of

the preceding reign concerning religion. The King remained head of the

English Church, and to speak irreverently of the Eucharist was still a

punishable offense; but the same statute ordered the sacrament to be

administered in both kinds, prescribed English as the language of

the service, and repudiated purgatory and Masses for the dead. English

Protestants who had fled from England returned with the pollen of

Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin on them; and foreign reformers, scenting

the new freedom, brought their diverse gospels to the troubled isle.

Peter Martyr Vermigli and Martin Bucer came from Strasbourg,

Bernardino Ochino from Augsburg, Jan Laski from Emden. Anabaptists and

Unitarians crossed the Channel to preach in England heresies that

shocked Protestants as much as Catholics. Iconoclast crowds in

London removed crucifixes, paintings, and statues from the churches;

Nicholas Ridley, Principal of Pembroke College, Cambridge, preached

powerfully against religious images and holy water; and, to cap it

all, Archbishop Cranmer "did eat meat openly in Lent, the like of

which was never seen since England was a Christian country." `06261

The Royal Council thought this was going too far, but Somerset

overruled it, and gave Reform its head. Under his lead Parliament

(1547) ordered that every picture on church wall or window,

commemorating a Prophet, Apostle, or saint, should be extirpated "so

that there should remain no memory of the same." Most of the stained

glass in the churches was destroyed; most of the statues were crushed;

crucifixes were replaced with the royal arms; whitewashed walls and

stainless windows took the color out of the religion of England. There

was a general scramble in each locality for church silver and gold;

and in 1551 the government appropriated what remained. The magnificent

medieval cathedrals barely remained.

The leading spirit in these changes was Archbishop Cranmer; their

leading opponents were Edmund Bonner, Bishop of London, and Stephen

Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester; Cranmer had them sent to the

Fleet. *06056 Meanwhile the Archbishop had been working for years on

an attempt to provide in one book a substitute for both the missal and

the breviary of the defeated Church. Peter Martyr and other scholars

helped him; but this First Book of Common Prayer (1548) was

essentially Cranmer's personal product, in which zeal for the new

faith merged with a fine sense for solemn beauty in feeling and

phrase; even his translations from the Latin had the spell of genius

on them. The Book was not quite revolutionary; it followed some

Lutheran leads, as in rejecting the sacrificial character of the Mass,

but it neither denied nor affirmed transubstantiation; it retained

much Catholic ritual, and could be accepted by not too precise a

Romanist. Cranmer submitted it not to Convocation but to Parliament,

and that laic body had no qualms of jurisdiction in prescribing

religious ritual and belief. The Book was made law of the realm, and

every church in England was ordered to adopt it. Bonner and

Gardiner, who were released from jail in a general amnesty (1549),

were reimprisoned when they rejected the right of Parliament to

legislate on religion. Princess Mary was allowed to hear Mass in the

privacy of her chambers.

A dangerous international situation quieted for a time the violent

debate between Catholics and Protestants. Henry II of France

demanded the evacuation of Boulogne; refused, he prepared to besiege

it; and at any moment Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, then a girl of five

in France, might bring Scotland into the war. Learning that the

Scots were arming and were stirring up rebellion in Ireland,

Somerset led a force across the border, and defeated them at Pinkie

Cleugh (September 10, 1547). The terms that he offered to the Scots

were remarkably generous and farseeing: the Scots were not to suffer

any forfeiture of liberty or property; Scotland and England were to be

merged into one "Empire of Great Britain"; each nation was to have

self-government under its own laws, but both were to be ruled, after

the current reign, by the offspring of the Queen of Scots. This was

precisely the union effected in 1603, except that it would have

facilitated a restoration of Catholicism in England, and its

continuance in Scotland. The Catholics of Scotland rejected the plan

for fear that English Protestantism would infect their own land;

besides, Scottish nobles were receiving pensions from the French

government, and thought a livre in the hand worth two pounds in the

bush.

Frustrated in seeking peace, facing war with France, struggling to

establish a compromise among uncompromising faiths at home, and

hearing renewed noises of agrarian revolt in England, Somerset drank

the cup of power to the dregs when his own brother plotted to

overthrow him. Thomas Seymour was not content to be Lord High

Admiral and a member of the Privy Council; he would be king. He

wooed Princess Mary, then Princess Elizabeth, but in vain. He received

money stolen from the mint, and spoils from the pirates whom he

allowed in the Channel; and so financed he gathered secret stores of

arms and ammunition. His conspiracy was discovered; he was accused

by the Earls of Warwick and Southampton; he was almost unanimously

condemned by both houses of Parliament; and on March 20, 1549, he

was put to death. Somerset tried to protect him, but failed; and the

Protector's prestige fell with his brother's head.

Somerset's ruin was completed by Ket's rebellion. That uprising

illustrated the apparent anomaly that whereas in Germany peasant

revolt was Protestant, in England it was Catholic; in each case

religion was a front for economic discontent, and in England the front

was Catholic because the government was now Protestant. "In the

experience of the agricultural poor," wrote the Protestant Froude, "an

increase of personal suffering was the chief result of the

Reformation." `06262 It is to the credit of Protestant divines in this

reign- Cranmer, Latimer, Lever, Crowley- that they condemned the

sharpened exploitation of the peasantry; and Somerset with hot

indignation denounced the merciless exactions of new landowners

"sprung from the dunghill" of city wealth. `06263 Parliament could

think of no wiser remedies than to pass ferocious laws against

beggary, and instruct the churches to take up weekly a collection

for the poor. Somerset sent out a commission to get the facts about

enclosures and high rents; it met with subtle or open resistance

from the landlords; tenants were terrified into concealing their

wrongs; and the modest recommendations of the commission were rejected

by the Parliament, in which the agricultural districts were

represented by landowning gentry. Somerset opened a private court in

his own house to hear the complaints of the poor. More and more

nobles, led by John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, joined in a movement to

depose him.

But now the peasants, furious with accumulated wrongs and frustrated

suits for redress, burst into revolt from one end of England to the

other. Somersetshire rose first, then Wilts and Gloucestershire,

Dorset and Hampshire, Berks and Oxford and Buckingham, in the west

Cornwall and Devon, in the east Norfolk and Kent. At Norwich a minor

landlord, Robert Ket, organized the rebels, seized the municipal

government, and set up a peasant commune that for a month ruled the

town and its hinterland. On Mousehold Hill, north of the city, Ket

encamped 16,000 men, and there, under an oak tree, he sat daily in

judgment upon offending landlords arrested by the peasants. He was not

bloodthirsty; those whom he condemned were imprisoned and fed. But

of property rights and title deeds he made small account. He bade

his men scour the surrounding country, force entry into the manor

houses, confiscate all weapons, and corral for the commune all

cattle and provisions wherever found. Sheep- chief rivals of the

peasants for the use of the soil- were rounded up to the number

20,000, and were incontinently consumed, along with "infinite beeves,"

swans, hinds, ducks, venison, and pigs. Amid this feasting Ket

nevertheless maintained remarkable order, even allowing preachers to

exhort the men to abandon the revolt. Somerset felt much sympathy with

the rebels, but agreed with Warwick that they must be dispersed lest

the whole economic structure of English life should be overturned.

Warwick was sent against them with an army recently raised to fight in

France. He offered the rebels a general pardon if they would return to

their homes. Ket favored acceptance, but hotter heads were for

judgment by battle, and Ket yielded to them. On August 17, 1549, the

issue was decided; Warwick's superior tactics won; 3,500 of the rebels

were cut down; but when the remnant surrendered Warwick contented

himself with nine hangings, and sent Ket and a brother to prison in

London. News of the defeat took the heart out of the other rebel

groups; one after another laid down its arms on promise of amnesty.

Somerset used his influence to have most of the leaders released,

and the Ket brothers for a while survived.

The Protector was accused of having encouraged the revolt by his

outspoken sympathy with the poor. He was branded also with failure

in foreign affairs, for France was now besieging Boulogne. He was

justly accused of allowing corruption among governmental personnel, of

debasing the currency, of augmenting his own fortune, of building

his sumptuous Somerset House amid the near-bankruptcy of the nation.

Warwick and Southampton led a move to unseat him. The majority of

the nobles, who could pardon his wealth but not his tenderness for

their peasants, seized the opportunity for revenge. On October 12,

1549, the Duke of Somerset was paraded as a prisoner through the

streets of London, and was shut up in the Tower.

II. THE WARWICK PROTECTORATE: 1549-53

-

By the standards of the time Somerset's enemies were lenient. He was

deprived of such property as he had acquired during his regency; on

February 6, 1550, he was released; in May he was restored to

membership in the Royal Council. But Warwick was now Protector of

the Realm.

He was a frank Machiavellian. Himself inclined to Catholicism, he

adopted a Protestant line because his rival Southampton was the

accepted leader of the Catholics, and the majority of the nobles

were financially wedded to the new creed. He had learned well the

art of war, but he knew that with a bankrupt government and an

impoverished people he could not hold Boulogne against a France having

twice the resources of England. He surrendered the town to Henry II,

and signed an ignominious, inescapable peace (1550).

Under the domination of landlords noble or common, Parliament (1549)

passed legislation fearfully punishing the rebellion of the

peasants. Enclosures were sanctified by express law; the taxes that

Somerset had imposed on sheep and wool to discourage enclosures were

repealed. Severe penalties were prescribed for workers who combined to

raise their wages. `06264 Assemblies gathering to discuss a lowering

of rents or prices were declared illegal; persons attending them

were to forfeit their property. Robert Ket and his brother were

hanged. Poverty increased, but the almshouses that had been swept away

by the religious revolution were not replaced. Sickness became

endemic, but hospitals were abandoned. The people were famished, but

the currency was again debased, and prices soared. The once sturdy

yeomanry of England were perishing, and the poorest of the poor were

sinking into savagery. `06265

Religious chaos rivaled economic anarchy. The majority of the people

remained Catholic, `06266 but the victory of Warwick over

Southampton left them leaderless, and they felt the weakness of

those who stand for the past. The collapse of the spiritual and

moral authority of the priesthood, together with the instability and

corruption of the government, allowed not only a growth of

immorality but a bedlam of heresies that frightened Catholics and

Protestants alike. John Clement (1556) described " the wonderful

sort of sects swarming everywhere, not only of papists... but also

of Arians, Anabaptists, and all other kind of heretics... some denying

the Holy Ghost to be God, some denying original sin, some denying

predestination... innumerable such like, too long to be

recited." `06267 Roger Hutchinson (c. 1550) wrote of "Sadducees and

Libertines" (freethinkers), who say "that the Devil... is nothing

but... a filthy affection of the flesh... that there is neither

place of rest nor pain after this life, that hell is nothing but a

tormenting and desperate conscience, and that a joyful, quiet, and

merry conscience is heaven." `06268 And John Hooper, Protestant Bishop

of Gloucester, reported that "there are some who say that the soul

of man is no better than the soul of a beast, and is mortal and

perishable. There are wretches who dare, in their conventicles, not

only to deny that Christ is our Saviour, but to call that blessed

Child a mischief-maker and deceiver." `06269

Utilizing the liberty that had been granted by Somerset, a

reckless fringe among the Protestants satirized the old religion

heartlessly. Oxford students parodied the Mass in their farces,

chopped missals to pieces, snatched consecrated bread from the altar

and trampled it under foot. London preachers called priests "imps of

the whore of Babylon"- i.e., the pope. `062610 Businessmen met for

conferences in St. Paul's; young gallants gathered there, fought,

and slew. The new protectorate was now definitely Protestant.

Reformers were named to bishoprics, usually on condition that they

transfer part of the episcopal manor to the courtiers responsible

for their appointment. `062611 Parliament (1550) ruled that all

paintings and statues were to be removed from any church in England

except "the monumental figures of kings or nobles who had never been

taken for saints"; and all prayer books except that of Cranmer were to

be destroyed. `062612 Vestments, copes, and altar textiles were

confiscated, sold, or given away, and soon graced the homes of the

nobility. `062613 An order of Council confiscated to the Treasury

all plate remaining in the churches after 1550; later Parliament

appropriated for the government the coins in the poor boxes of the

churches. `062614 Further funds were found for the government or its

personnel by canceling scholarships for poor students, and suppressing

the regius (state-supported) professorships established at the

universities by Henry VIII. `062615 The Parliament of 1552 recommended

celibacy to the clergy, but permitted them to marry if chastity proved

irksome.

Religious persecution, so long of heretics by Catholics, was now

in England, as in Switzerland and Lutheran Germany, of heretics and

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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